Creating a landing page with Leadpages

To save time, you can start from one of Leadpages’ many pre-built templates for various niches/uses. For example, in the screenshot below you can see templates for everything from:

Courses

Product giveaways

Webinar signup

Etc.

Or, if you’ve got an eye for conversion-optimized design, you can always build your landing page from a blank slate.

Once you choose your starting point, you use a grid-based drag interface to build and tweak your landing page.

Leadpages includes widgets for basic design elements – like buttons and images – as well as more advanced elements – like forms and social share buttons.

For each element, you get detailed configuration options to control styling and functionality:

You can also set up two-step opt-ins by linking to a Leadbox.

For every form, you can easily connect to your favorite email marketing service. And Leadpages also includes prebuilt widgets to help you create a checkout page if you want to directly sell a product.

Then, once you’re happy with everything, you can publish your landing page and either:

Let Leadpages handle hosting everything (including any lead magnets or other downloadable assets)

Import your landing page to your own domain, including a simple WordPress plugin (you can still have Leadpages host your assets, of course)

To help you optimize your landing page’s conversion rate, Leadpages then makes it easy to spin up a split test just by clicking a few buttons. You can create as many variants as needed and distribute traffic in whatever proportion you desire.

Leadpages pricing + how to get

Leadpages’ cheapest Standard plan starts at $25 per month (billed annually). However, for access to A/B testing and other important features, you’ll likely want at least the Pro plan, which starts at $48 per month (billed annually).

2. Instapage

At a high level, there are a lot of core similarities between Leadpages and Instapage.

Like Leadpages, Instapage helps you create your landing pages using a visual drag and drop interface. And it also includes easy split testing and a bevy of integrations to help you connect to all of your other favorite services.

A few of the bigger differentiating features between Instapage vs Leadpages would be:

Instapage has more collaboration features, which is great for teams

Instapage’s drag and drop editor is free-form. That is, you can move elements anywhere you want, whereas Leadpages still forces you to stay within its grid system

Instapage also offers some other more advanced features on higher tier plans like:

Dynamic text replacement (helps reduce your bounce rate)

Heatmap analytics in addition to regular conversion rate analytics

Creating a landing page with Instapage

Like Leadpages, Instapage lets you spin up a landing page from either a blank template (or wireframe) or a pre-built template:

You can then edit your template using true drag and drop. Each element can be further styled. And for certain elements – like forms – you can set up integrations with other services in this interface.

One of the nice things about Instapage is that it lets you apply the same level of detail to the mobile version of your landing page. While pretty much every landing page tool is responsive these days, not every tool lets you actually make edits directly to the mobile version of your design:

And you can even create split test variants before you go to publish your landing page.

If you’re a marketer working in a team, you’ll love that, before you publish, you can enter Comment Mode to either:

Make comments for your colleagues to view

Send a preview link to your colleagues so that they can give you feedback

Features like this one are why Instapage really makes a great option for marketing teams.

Instapage pricing + how to get

Starting at $69 per month (billed annually), Instapage is a step up in price. Additionally, if you want access to A/B testing, you’ll need the $99 per month Optimizer plan.

3. Landingi

Like the previous two tools, Landingi is another drag and drop landing page builder tool that eliminates code from your landing page development process.

Its landing page outputs are fully responsive and Landingi can either host your landing page for you or integrate into your own website. You can also:

Connect to external tools like MailChimp, HubSpot, SalesForce, and lots more

View analytics

Create A/B split tests

And one feature that stands out from Leadpages and Instapage is Landingi’s lead management tool. This is essentially a “tiny CRM” that lets you view important information about each lead – like keywords and time spent on different pages – right from your Landingi interface.

Creating a landing page with Landingi

Then, you can build and edit your landing page’s elements using the drag and drop editor:

A few nice things about this interface are that you can:

Copy or move elements or sections between different landing pages

Invite other team members to collaborate and comment on your design

And like the other tools, you can also quickly spin up and analyze A/B tests.

Landingi pricing + how to get

Starting at just $29 per month for its Create plan (paid annually), Landingi is competitively priced. Like the previous two tools, though, you’ll need at least the $49 per month Automate plan if you want access to A/B testing and other more advanced features.

4. Thrive Optimize + Thrive Architect

Up until now, all of the landing page tools I’ve featured have been platform-agnostic. That is, no matter what your website is built on, the tools can help you create a landing page.

A stack of Thrive Optimize/Thrive Architect changes things up with the fact that they’re both WordPress plugins. The benefit of this approach is that it manages to still give you a significant amount of flexibility while coming in at a much more affordable price point (with no ongoing fee).

The potential downside, of course, is that you have to use WordPress. So if that’s a dealbreaker, you’ll probably want to skip the rest of this section.

If you’re on team WordPress, here’s how the stack works:

Thrive Architect is a drag and drop WordPress page builder that comes with 100s of prebuilt landing page templates. You can use it to create some surprisingly complex landing pages and connect to popular email marketing services.

Thrive Optimize makes it easy to A/B test the pages that create with Thrive Architect and view conversion rate analytics.

Creating a landing page with Thrive Architect and Thrive Optimize

To build your landing page with Thrive Architect, you can either start from a variety of themed templates or a blank slate:

Then, you can use the drag and drop interface to add elements, change styling, and lots more:

Once you’ve built your landing page, Thrive Optimize lets you create one or more test variants and divide traffic as you see fit.

You can even automatically declare a winner after a certain statistical confidence level is reached.

Thrive Architect/Thrive Optimize pricing + how to get

You can purchase a bundle with both plugins for $127 for a single site license. The big bonus is that’s a one-time cost. You get unlimited updates, though you only get one year of support.

For that reason, this duo is definitely the most affordable option on this list.

5. Clickfunnels

As its name suggests, Clickfunnels is a tool that helps you create your entire sales funnel (which means a few different landing page designs).

If you just want one-off landing pages, that means it might not be a great fit. But if you do want something that can help you create and optimize an entire funnel, Clickfunnels is a pricey, but effective, way to do it.

Creating a landing page with Clickfunnels

Whereas the other tools give you templates for individual landing pages, Clickfunnels gives you templates for entire funnels:

Inside each funnel template, you can choose a style that you like and then edit further using a basic drag and drop editor. You can also sync up to external tools to use your own preferred email marketing service or shopping cart.

Clickfunnels pricing + how to get

Clickfunnels starts at $97 per month, though you can get a discount if you opt for annual billing.

7. Unbounce

Founded all the way back in 2009, Unbounce is one of the older landing page builder tools out there. It brands itself as “the conversion platform for marketers”. And while a good chunk of that platform is the landing page builder, Unbounce also branches off into popups and sticky bars as other tools to help you improve your conversion rate.

8. Launchrock

Launchrock, part of the startups.co platform, is a bit of a twist on landing page creation. This is evident in its branding, where the Launchrock marketing team calls it “a site builder dedicated to early customer acquisition.”

That branding makes it pretty niche as far as landing page tools go, but if you are still just getting started, it can help you launch your online presence in a unique way.

See, beyond helping you create lead generation pages, Launchrock includes a built-in audience of over 21 million users that you can reach as part of its viral platform.

That audience, in combination with its block-based WYSIWYG builder, is what makes Launchrock unique.

Creating a landing page with Launchrock

To get started, you can build your page using the aforementioned editor:

Then, Launchrock helps you build an audience by leveraging social sharing and providing detailed analytics for all your traffic/visitors.

Launchrock pricing + how to get

Launchrock is free. There is a paid plan to remove Launchrock branding and allow custom HTML/CSS. But if you’re ok with operating on a Launchrock subdomain, it’s 100% free.

Tips for choosing the right landing page tool

Look – as a marketer, you likely have very specific needs, so I’m not going to try to shoehorn you into a single tool.

A few tips to help you choose the right tool would be:

Not all drag and drop builders are equal. Some still force you to abide by a grid, while others give you true design freedom. Consider which is best for you.

Look at the integrations. While most of these tools offer lengthy integration lists, oftentimes the available integrations change between each pricing tier. Make sure that the tool has your needed integrations at a tier that fits your budget.

Consider the templates. Some tools have different “aesthetics” for their templates. Unless you’re going to build everything from scratch, make sure you like how they look.

Beyond that, I’ll also try to highlight some of the unique differentiators for each tool. This is just a quick bullet list – but hopefully, it can further help to point you in the right direction:

Leadpages – Affordable and includes other tools like Leadboxes and Leadlinks.

Instapage – Great team collaboration features and flexible mobile design options.

Colin Newcomer

Colin Newcomer is a freelance writer for hire with a background in SEO and affiliate marketing. He helps clients grow their web visibility by writing primarily about digital marketing, WordPress, and B2B topics.